Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Thunderstorms in Beatriz Show Strengthening Toward Hurricane Status

21.06.2011

Tropical Storm Beatriz developed from a low pressure area that NASA was watching last week. Beatriz is now expected to reach hurricane force and hit western coastal Mexico today and tomorrow. NASA satellite imagery today revealed powerful thunderstorms bubbling within, indicating further strengthening is occurring.

Beatriz formed from the low pressure area System 92E that NASA and JAXA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) was watching last week. The low pressure area was coming together on Friday, June 17 and had some isolated areas of heavy rainfall. Those areas of heavy rainfall have increased as the low organized and strengthened over the weekend. On June 19 at 11 a.m. EDT it became tropical depression two-E. Just three hours later it reached tropical storm strength and was named Beatriz.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Beatriz on June 20 at 08:11 UTC and the AIRS instrument captured this infrared image of the storm. The image showed a more rounded and organized circulation with strong convection (purple) and cloud tops as cold as -63F/-52C.Credit: NASA/JPL, Ed Olsen

Infrared imagery on June 19 and 20 from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite showed that cloud tops are cooling, indicating growing and higher thunderstorms. Typically - the higher the thunderstorm, the stronger the storm. Those cloud top temperatures in infrared imagery reached the threshold of strongest storms/coldest cloud tops, for the AIRS data of temperatures as cold as or colder than -63 Fahrenheit (-52 Celsius).

When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Beatriz on June 19, 2011 at 1959 UTC 3:59 p.m. EDT) hours after it reached tropical storm strength, the storm appeared somewhat elongated. At that time, Beatriz had maximum sustained winds near 40 mph.

By June 20 at 08:11 UTC (4:11 a.m. EDT) the AIRS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite showed a more rounded and organized circulation with strong convection. Meteorologists at the National Hurricane Center use this data with other satellite data in their forecasts and expect Beatriz to reach hurricane status later today.

As a result, a hurricane warning is in effect for the western Mexican coast from Zihuatanejo northwestward to La Fortuna and a watch extends from there northward to Cabo Corrientes. In addition, tropical storm warnings are in effect from Tecpan De Galeana westward to east of Zihuatanejo and from north of La Fortuna to Cabo Corrientes.

Maximum sustained winds were near 65 mph/100 kmh). It was about 125 miles (205 km) south-southwest of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico and 210 miles (335 km) south-southeast of Beatriz is moving to the northwest near 9 mph (15 kmh) and has a minimum central pressure of 995 millibars.

Coastal communities in the warning and watch area should be prepared for tropical storm conditions today followed by hurricane conditions tonight. Rainfall is expected to be excessive between 6 and 12 inches in the states of Guerrero, Jalisco, Colima and Michoacan in southwestern Mexico with isolated amounts to 20 inches in mountainous areas. That means life-threatening flash floods and mudslides are possible. Coastal areas, however, face flooding from storm surge.

Die letzten 5 Focus-News des innovations-reports im Überblick:

Controlling electronic current is essential to modern electronics, as data and signals are transferred by streams of electrons which are controlled at high speed. Demands on transmission speeds are also increasing as technology develops. Scientists from the Chair of Laser Physics and the Chair of Applied Physics at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) have succeeded in switching on a current with a desired direction in graphene using a single laser pulse within a femtosecond ¬¬ – a femtosecond corresponds to the millionth part of a billionth of a second. This is more than a thousand times faster compared to the most efficient transistors today.

At the productronica trade fair in Munich this November, the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT will be presenting Laser-Based Tape-Automated Bonding, LaserTAB for short. The experts from Aachen will be demonstrating how new battery cells and power electronics can be micro-welded more efficiently and precisely than ever before thanks to new optics and robot support.

Fraunhofer ILT from Aachen relies on a clever combination of robotics and a laser scanner with new optics as well as process monitoring, which it has developed...

Plants and algae use the enzyme Rubisco to fix carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere and converting it into biomass. Algae have figured out a way to increase the efficiency of carbon fixation. They gather most of their Rubisco into a ball-shaped microcompartment called the pyrenoid, which they flood with a high local concentration of carbon dioxide. A team of scientists at Princeton University, the Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford University and the Max Plank Institute of Biochemistry have unravelled the mysteries of how the pyrenoid is assembled. These insights can help to engineer crops that remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while producing more food.

Our brains house extremely complex neuronal circuits, whose detailed structures are still largely unknown. This is especially true for the so-called cerebral cortex of mammals, where among other things vision, thoughts or spatial orientation are being computed. Here the rules by which nerve cells are connected to each other are only partly understood. A team of scientists around Moritz Helmstaedter at the Frankfiurt Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and Helene Schmidt (Humboldt University in Berlin) have now discovered a surprisingly precise nerve cell connectivity pattern in the part of the cerebral cortex that is responsible for orienting the individual animal or human in space.